My Father’s Bread
June 18th 2017 — Father’s Day
I’d always wanted to help change the world — people’s health, the environment, and animal welfare — through food. Circumstances have changed (story for another time) and everything is gone, or at least on hold, or something. A lot of crazy things happened, shrapnel flew everywhere, and there is so much to repair, and heal. In three days, I go to serve a few months of time. Anyway. When it comes to changing the world through food, it turns out my father wants this too.
There is a lot I inherited from my father, whether genetically or in how I was raised. Injustices are felt deeply, perhaps internalized. Doing good work matters, as does helping others. My memories of when I was little are few and far between. I’m not sure why that is. But one memory I recall is driving down one of the streets in the Boston suburb where I was raised. There was something moving in the middle of the road and my father slowed the car. It was a squirrel flopping around, having presumably been hit by another car. It was clearly a goner but still not dead. My father went around to the trunk of the car as I watched wondering what he was doing. He got out a heavy garden shovel. I didn’t see what he did but I heard it, the sound of the edge of the shovel hitting the pavement. He killed the squirrel, an act of mercy. It had been the right thing to do. Most people would not have bothered.
My father was born in 1939 in Latvia. In 1944 his family fled in advance of the Russian Army to Germany where they stayed in a DP (displaced persons) camp until they came to the U.S. as refugees in 1949. His mother (my grandmother) was born in 1896 also in Latvia. During World War I, her own father (my great-grandfather) was a civilian victim of poison gas. She later gave up a career as an opera singer to become a pharmacist, having realized how important medicines were at that time in saving people’s lives.
While I was growing up outside Boston in the 1970’s and 80's, my father was a physicist at M.I.T. and a black belt in Tae Kwon Do. I remember he could do that thing where you grab onto a street pole, and then hold yourself out parallel to the ground. I don’t even know how that’s possible, but I remember thinking it was impressive and I was proud that my dad could do that. I was proud of a lot that he did and the way he lived, and treated others.
He also always cared deeply about food. We were middle class, and my father was very careful with money. He would scrutinize the expense of things large and small, but never when it came to food. He bought the best. I never went hungry as a child, it was quite the opposite. Food was always available and it was always fresh and good.
My father didn’t get angry a lot. But I vividly recall him being angry and visibly disgusted over Wonder Bread, its very existence. He hated junk food in general, but he was particularly passionately angry about Wonder Bread, and all bread like it: processed, devoid of nutrients, full of chemicals, fluffy and fake. My grandmother, his mother, lived with us when I was very young. She baked dark 100% rye bread, and my lunches packed for school were always on this very sturdy dark bread. I vaguely recall being sort of embarrassed about my weird healthy lunches early on in school, but of course I’m grateful now.
My father has mostly retired from his career as a physicist, but 10 years ago he started Black Rooster Food to market this dark rye bread, the kind that my grandmother made. Even at his age, he still comes to NYC and stands at Zabar’s or at Fairway and hands out samples of the bread (which you can buy at those stores, among others). He’ll be spending a fair amount of time in NYC this summer so you may see him there.
There is a lot more I could say about my father, and about things in general. This past year my father has done so much for me. Among the characteristics that I inherited from him is a difficulty with emotions, expressing them when they are most meaningful. Because of the unusual difficulty of the past year for me, and then for him and the rest of my family, I’ve learned a lot more about my father as I think he’s learned more about me. Trying to make sense of my own circumstances, I wrote pages and pages this last year, which I shared with him. He also wrote a letter on my behalf which was in itself a gift, as I learned more about his impressions and thoughts about me. Sometimes it’s easier to say things in writing.
This year on Father’s Day I’m not quite in a place to be able to buy my father a gift, but I’m posting something he wrote about his bread in the hopes that it may encourage someone who reads it to eat a little better, maybe discover his bread. My own focus was always vegan and raw and my father’s bread isn’t raw of course, but it’s vegan, and really really good. I’ve been eating a lot of it this past year, more and more as I prepare to go to jail this summer. After the initial shock of learning indeed I would be going to serve time, my father said, “I’ll send you lots of bread!” at which point I had to break the news to him that it’s not quite like summer camp, you can’t mail care packages of bread, or any food, to Rikers. Sadly.
My father wrote an essay which I’ve posted here about why marketing this bread is so meaningful to him. There’s a sentence about how it pairs well with vegetarian foods, you can guess who added that one. I like toasting the dark rye and putting coconut butter on it, and salt. It tastes better than dairy butter to me. It also makes great avocado toast. My father’s bread and avocados are two things I’ve been eating a lot of before I leave for the rest of the summer and into the fall.
Here’s his essay: Why Am I Marketing Baltic Rye Bread.
With love,
Happy Father’s Day. Priecīgu Tēva Dienu.
My father on Instagram: @blackroosterfood
